Astronomers enthralled as a hungry black hole wakes up and starts feeding
At the center of almost every galaxy lies a giant monster: a supermassive black hole that is ten of thousands or even millions of times the mass of the sun.…
Wild Theory Suggests Dark Matter Could Make Stars Immortal
Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity, according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.…
Astronomers Witness a Supermassive Black Hole Roaring to Life
Five years ago, a galaxy 300 million light-years away got a lot brighter in telescopes, radiating ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light out into space. This year, the resurgent galaxy started…
Spin of Supermassive Black Hole Measured at a Quarter the Speed of Light
An artist’s impression of Gilese 12 b in orbit around its red dwarf host star.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC) A newly discovered exoplanet, with its surface temperature estimated to be remarkably…
Groundbreaking Measurement Reveals a Black Hole Spinning at a Quarter the Speed of Light
A team of astronomers has managed to calculate the speed of a distant supermassive black hole’s spin thanks to the object’s chance meeting with a star—which it promptly destroyed. How…
NASA 360-degree video shows what it’s like to plunge into a black hole
If you were having a bad day, plunging into a black hole would be enough to really top it off. Apparently, you’d experience a process known as “spaghettification” in which…
Biggest stellar black hole to date discovered in our galaxy
Black holes generally come in two sizes: big and really big. As they are so dense, they are measured in terms of mass rather than size, and astronomers call these…
Astronomers Discover Heaviest Stellar Black Hole in the Milky Way
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most…
Neutron Stars Spew Jets That Travel at Relativistic Speeds, Scientists Say
The dense remains of massive stars generate powerful jets of gas and dust that move hundreds of millions of miles per hour, according to research published last week in Nature.…
New Image Exposes Intense Magnetic Field of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
A new image of our galaxy’s central black hole reveals the magnetic field surrounding the object in polarized light. The image reveals how gas and superheated matter in the immediate…